The old RPG companies I used to love -- Bioware and Bethesda, are currently dismantling themselves, rushing to catch onto that MMO/Lootbox easy cash that requires no quality or pride in creation. Screw them.

The old RPG companies I used to love -- Bioware and Bethesda, are currently dismantling themselves, rushing to catch onto that MMO/Lootbox easy cash that requires no quality or pride in creation. Screw them.

Online multiplayer is killing the solo experience. Nice to see someone embrace the desire to not have an experience ruined by assholes. EA can go **** themselves.

Cyberpunk was my favorite trailer for any upcoming game at E3. I can't wait to see what CD Projekt Red does with it. They're probably the only game company that I feel comfortable pre-ordering from these days.

I'm with ya SeatownJay, I think we'll see a release of this at the earliest 2020. They didn't even put a year on the trailer.

JGfromtheNW wrote:Cyberpunk was my favorite trailer for any upcoming game at E3. I can't wait to see what CD Projekt Red does with it. They're probably the only game company that I feel comfortable pre-ordering from these days.

I'm with ya SeatownJay, I think we'll see a release of this at the earliest 2020. They didn't even put a year on the trailer.

JGfromtheNW wrote:Cyberpunk was my favorite trailer for any upcoming game at E3. I can't wait to see what CD Projekt Red does with it. They're probably the only game company that I feel comfortable pre-ordering from these days.

I'm with ya SeatownJay, I think we'll see a release of this at the earliest 2020. They didn't even put a year on the trailer.

Maulbert wrote:Online multiplayer is killing the solo experience. Nice to see someone embrace the desire to not have an experience ruined by assholes. EA can go **** themselves.

No doubt. They've done nothing but destroy game company after game company. And now they are desecrating the rotting corpses.

My buddy tells me that we'll never in our lifetime see another Single Player Mass Effect game -- it's just trademark merchandising at this point. Seriously would like to hang every EA exec for that alone...

Beyond microtransactions and big companies like EA attempting to gouge their own customers, this is the golden age of gaming. Whether you want competitive multiplayer, single player campaigns or co-op adventures, there is a ton of titles out there for folks to enjoy.

Great single player experiences that have come out in the last few years:Kingdome Come: Deliverance GTA VWitcher 3 (and the DLCs)Dark Souls 3NiohHotline Miami (1 & 2)Tomb RaiderRise of the Tomb RaiderMad MaxSouth Park: The Stick of TruthSouth Park: The Fractured But WholeBastionDying LightFallout 4DoomWolfenstein II: The New ColossusThe Evil Within seriesDishonoredPreyXCOM 2Metal Gear Solid V

I'm sure I could go on if I started actually looking at lists. There's plenty to choose from these days, especially on Steam with big ol' sales going on all the time - like right now through the 5th of July.

JGfromtheNW wrote:Beyond microtransactions and big companies like EA attempting to gouge their own customers, this is the golden age of gaming. Whether you want competitive multiplayer, single player campaigns or co-op adventures, there is a ton of titles out there for folks to enjoy.

Great single player experiences that have come out in the last few years:Kingdome Come: Deliverance GTA VWitcher 3 (and the DLCs)Dark Souls 3NiohHotline Miami (1 & 2)Tomb RaiderRise of the Tomb RaiderMad MaxSouth Park: The Stick of TruthSouth Park: The Fractured But WholeBastionDying LightFallout 4DoomWolfenstein II: The New ColossusThe Evil Within seriesDishonoredPreyXCOM 2Metal Gear Solid V

I'm sure I could go on if I started actually looking at lists. There's plenty to choose from these days, especially on Steam with big ol' sales going on all the time - like right now through the 5th of July.

I'm not saying there aren't great single player offerings (I am seriously anticipating Red Dead Redemption 2 in October, screw GTA, I'm all about Grand Theft Horse), I simply meant EA and Konami and the like are trying to strangle them to death. Hideo Kojima's vision for MGSV was so much grander, but was cut short by Konami's desire to make a quick buck, and now we have Metal Gear Survive, a terrible game by terrible people for mindless sheep. Even Bethesda is getting in on the act, I loved Fallout 3 and New Vegas (4 was meh), and Fallout 76 has lost me.

I get what you're saying Maulbert, I think the trends over the last 10 years from major game studios/publishers is disgusting. From releasing broken games that take months to be patched, to releasing games with minimal content and requiring users to buy DLCs or wait/grind forever for free content, to putting in-game progression behind loot boxes and other microtransactions, the gaming industry has been treating their customers like crap. The whole Battlefront 2 fiasco was kinda an amalgamation of gamers' frustrations with not only EA, but the trends in gaming themselves.

With that said, there's still a ton of great offerings from all types of studios. CD Projekt Red has definitely earned my trust, which is why I'm so pumped on Cyberpunk. I just don't think the industry is in as bad of shape as people think. I understand the frustrations if you really only enjoy single player games, they've been left in the dust in comparison to development of multiplayer focused games.

JGfromtheNW wrote:I understand the frustrations if you really only enjoy single player games, they've been left in the dust in comparison to development of multiplayer focused games.

No, they haven't. You even provided a rather extensive list to prove otherwise. A list that I might add didn't even have an Indie studio game listed, and there are a good amount of them.

Maulbert wrote:and Fallout 76 has lost me

Fallout 76 is an MMO with limited people per server from what I've gathered. Using this as an example of ruining single player is like saying that any other MMO has done that, and that has never been the case.

Maulbert wrote:I'm not saying there aren't great single player offerings (I am seriously anticipating Red Dead Redemption 2 in October, screw GTA, I'm all about Grand Theft Horse), I simply meant EA and Konami and the like are trying to strangle them to death. Hideo Kojima's vision for MGSV was so much grander, but was cut short by Konami's desire to make a quick buck, and now we have Metal Gear Survive, a terrible game by terrible people for mindless sheep. Even Bethesda is getting in on the act, I loved Fallout 3 and New Vegas (4 was meh), and Fallout 76 has lost me.

It's not just Fallout 76... it's the creation club nonsense that spoiled fallout 4 and really gouged modding.

Some of the best modders gave up on the game -- there are far fewer scripted mods in Fallout 4 than in Skyrim, because the CC destroys the extended scrips with every update. Furthermore, Bethesda is actively leaning on modders -- trying to curtail things they deem "offensive" - eventually they want complete control over mods, so that nobody can make a mod that will offend x or y group.

Games like GTA are a thing of the past -- I was never a fan of that game, too creepy for me, BUT I will absolutely defend it's right to exist and for other people to enjoy it. I detest censorship, man. As a writer, as an artist... I loathe it.

CD Projekt Red is bucking the trend, but already Anita Sarkesian and her freaky little minions are raising funds to go after that company... so I fear for everything in the future that has good single player content that game companies actually have to invest in and work for... see, small developers do it to make something special, but big corperations like EA are all about "minimum work for maximum profit"... and since companies like CD not only threaten corperations, they present a "divergent opinion" to the Big Brother, or should I say "Big Sister" nonsense that is currently taking over our society.

The Orwellian Zombie hordes have already arrived, and they're rampaging through everything... and now they are targeting our "escapes" - comics, video games, sci-fin, fantasy, et. so that they have total control over what people think from cradle to grave.

Last edited by The_Z_Man on Thu Jun 28, 2018 3:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

fenderbender123 wrote:I hear this Sarkisian gal brought up from time to time, but I don't know anything about her or what she does. She seems to be very despised among gamers, though.

It's hard to talk about her without politics, but she's an extreme feminist and SJW --

Sort of a Jerry Falwell, Tipper Gore, et for the new generation, except more extreme than either and unlike the former, she's a media darling.

She collects money and organizes campaigns based on the fact that video games degrade women and are immoral. She wants sexy clothing stricken from games. She wants women in games wearing armor to not have breasts on said armor or anything that looks like a female breast. She wants things like thongs banned - while she wants men to be subjected to "man thongs" as recompense. She wants female characters to be baser and less attractive, even ugly, so that girls playing the game are not mentally wounded by not being pretty enough... and also points out that men cannot be mentally wounded when the God of War or whatever hero is more muscular and manly than we are, because we have inherent privilege and the books need to be balanced because of all the suffering we have inflicted on women as part of the (TM) "patriarchy"

Also, she has put out fake criteria and claims... just like most preacher/sheister's and snake oil salesmen in history. Claimed to be a lifelong gamer, yet didn't know much at all about games and got caught in her lies a bunch of times.

She even attacked Boogie at a video game convention about a year back - a dude who is about the gentlest soul in gaming, just spewed her venom all over him, screaming and ranting

Short story.

She hates men.

She hates video games and geek culture that appeals to men, and wants it all changed to appeal only to women.

Paint the world pink and put rainbows and puppy dogs on our games and chase out the evil men.

Aros and I would be villains in her book for our thumbnails, and worthy of "reprogramming".

fenderbender123 wrote:I hear this Sarkisian gal brought up from time to time, but I don't know anything about her or what she does. She seems to be very despised among gamers, though.

It's hard to talk about her without politics, but she's an extreme feminist and SJW --

Sort of a Jerry Falwell, Tipper Gore, et for the new generation, except more extreme than either and unlike the former, she's a media darling.

She collects money and organizes campaigns based on the fact that video games degrade women and are immoral. She wants sexy clothing stricken from games. She wants women in games wearing armor to not have breasts on said armor or anything that looks like a female breast. She wants things like thongs banned - while she wants men to be subjected to "man thongs" as recompense. She wants female characters to be baser and less attractive, even ugly, so that girls playing the game are not mentally wounded by not being pretty enough... and also points out that men cannot be mentally wounded when the God of War or whatever hero is more muscular and manly than we are, because we have inherent privilege and the books need to be balanced because of all the suffering we have inflicted on women as part of the (TM) "patriarchy"

Also, she has put out fake criteria and claims... just like most preacher/sheister's and snake oil salesmen in history. Claimed to be a lifelong gamer, yet didn't know much at all about games and got caught in her lies a bunch of times.

She even attacked Boogie at a video game convention about a year back - a dude who is about the gentlest soul in gaming, just spewed her venom all over him, screaming and ranting

Short story.

She hates men.

She hates video games and geek culture that appeals to men, and wants it all changed to appeal only to women.

Paint the world pink and put rainbows and puppy dogs on our games and chase out the evil men.

Aros and I would be villains in her book for our thumbnails, and worthy of "reprogramming".

Spoken like a true MRA that believes they have a divine right to be a racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobe.

SeatownJay wrote:Spoken like a true MRA that believes they have a divine right to be a racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobe.

Dude, I'm not going to get into who I am with you, but it's hysterical the blanket accusations people can make based on you know, someone loving free speech, beautiful women, and the occasional chainmail bikini.

But just for your info, about 80% of my fanbase is female and/or LGTBI.

I was actually wondering that myself... is that sarcasm or is that serious? I went back and forth.

Is it scary that it's so hard to tell these days?

I don't know Z_Man well enough to call him those things in all seriousness. Although, sadly, that description I gave does fit quite a few troglodytes who I've seen railing online against feminism. Their responses wouldn't have been nearly as cogent or rational as Z's was, though.

I can understand all points of view on feminism. I think they are all necessary forces that work against each other to keep everything in equilibrium. Let's take a moment to say thank you to the contributing population of those forces.

There are some genuine internet troglodytes out there, but I will say that when Sarkeesian started her little crusade, she was not a gamer, something she has admitted, so she was looking for a hill to die on, which I find despicable. Now she's acting like a martyr. I try to give her or the dustup she started as little attention as possible.

I tend to get a lot of hate because I am so active in the game community as both a writer who focuses on LGTBI themes, and a gamer who likes the fact that there are more female leads and diversity in gaming. The dudebros are not fans of moi, to be clear.

On the other hand, I get hate from the 3rd wavers for not going full in on the crazy -- I want quality content before anything, and I do not subscribe to the "all men are evil and just waiting for their opportunity to rape you" worldview.

JGfromtheNW wrote:Beyond microtransactions and big companies like EA attempting to gouge their own customers, this is the golden age of gaming. Whether you want competitive multiplayer, single player campaigns or co-op adventures, there is a ton of titles out there for folks to enjoy.

Great single player experiences that have come out in the last few years:Kingdome Come: Deliverance GTA VWitcher 3 (and the DLCs)Dark Souls 3NiohHotline Miami (1 & 2)Tomb RaiderRise of the Tomb RaiderMad MaxSouth Park: The Stick of TruthSouth Park: The Fractured But WholeBastionDying LightFallout 4DoomWolfenstein II: The New ColossusThe Evil Within seriesDishonoredPreyXCOM 2Metal Gear Solid V

I'm sure I could go on if I started actually looking at lists. There's plenty to choose from these days, especially on Steam with big ol' sales going on all the time - like right now through the 5th of July.

There are some decent games out, but I'd hardly say that we're in the golden age of gaming. There are some disturbing trends going around among the developers. The first of which being the release of incomplete games. Games are being released, and pushed out to the public in and incomplete fashion. The condition of these games in some cases is game breaking. A good example of this was The Division. On release it was horrendous, borderline unplayable. Now a days it is a respectable game but it took them a few years to get it down. This is the case with many games being released these days.

The second issue that needs to be touched on is the micro transactions that virtually every developer is pushing. It is getting to become quite absurd. A good example of this is the incoming COD game, Black Ops 4. In order to get the complete game I've heard it will cost you 150 dollars in total. It isn't just Activision and EA doing this either. Rockstar is starting to jump on the micro transaction bandwagon with GTA online. The game is borderline unplayable due to the costs of essential items in the game. You either have to grind for many hours, or go to rock-star and buy "shark cards" which can cost up to 100 dollars. What is happening here is the exchange of real currency for in game currency. These cards have made Rockstar 500 million dollars alone. Rockstar used to be a franchise that released killer games anually, now they have even stated that they are going to be employing this business model in all of their games.

What is happening is games are being pushed out with minimal content, or just flat out incomplete content. If anyone wants to continue, or have a pleasurable experience they must fork out considerable amounts of money. The games you have mentioned are becoming fewer in number and farther apart.

Spin Doctor wrote:There are some decent games out, but I'd hardly say that we're in the golden age of gaming. There are some disturbing trends going around among the developers. The first of which being the release of incomplete games. Games are being released, and pushed out to the public in and incomplete fashion. The condition of these games in some cases is game breaking. A good example of this was The Division. On release it was horrendous, borderline unplayable. Now a days it is a respectable game but it took them a few years to get it down. This is the case with many games being released these days.

The second issue that needs to be touched on is the micro transactions that virtually every developer is pushing. It is getting to become quite absurd. A good example of this is the incoming COD game, Black Ops 4. In order to get the complete game I've heard it will cost you 150 dollars in total. It isn't just Activision and EA doing this either. Rockstar is starting to jump on the micro transaction bandwagon with GTA online. The game is borderline unplayable due to the costs of essential items in the game. You either have to grind for many hours, or go to rock-star and buy "shark cards" which can cost up to 100 dollars. What is happening here is the exchange of real currency for in game currency. These cards have made Rockstar 500 million dollars alone. Rockstar used to be a franchise that released killer games anually, now they have even stated that they are going to be employing this business model in all of their games.

What is happening is games are being pushed out with minimal content, or just flat out incomplete content. If anyone wants to continue, or have a pleasurable experience they must fork out considerable amounts of money. The games you have mentioned are becoming fewer in number and farther apart.

Absolutely -- the Creation Club nonsense alone seriously hurt the entire Fallout Community... especially modding. Mike Moore, one of the best weapon modders for FO4, just up and quit, and so many others who got sick of the script extender breaking every month so Bethesda could charge kids 5 dollars real life cash for a pair of spectacles to put on their supermutant companion... or 10 dollars for a crap weapon that isn't any better looking or better designed than vanilla or expansion weapons, and should have been included in the base game.

They're stripping games of content that we used to get for free... then offering it after the fact for a cash transaction.

The cost of Fallout 4 plus all expansions (if you had it from the beginning and bought each expansion as it was released)? About 100 bucks on average, though now you can buy the GOTY edition for 65 bucks.

But the cost of Fallout 4 + all that creation club gimmick stuff? Somewhere around 350 dollars... That's the cost of an entire game console or an entry level gaming PC if you make it yourself.

It's freaking theft, man... and their target, their "dupes" for this junk are kids who are going to beg their parents to put it on the credit card...

Spin Doctor wrote:There are some decent games out, but I'd hardly say that we're in the golden age of gaming.

As someone who plays a lot of games and follows the industry more than your average person, I fundamentally disagree. I guess if you're someone who buys an Xbox or PlayStation and then bends over to big studios and only buys $60 AAA games, it's not the golden age, but there has never been a time with more offerings from more studios at more varied prices than there is today. Different markets to buy from, cross-platform titles, indie devs given more resources and opportunity to complete games than ever before, Xbox/Microsoft exclusives now being able to be played on both Xbox or PC, family sharing your games on Xbox/PC, the list can go on and on.

Most consumers, unfortunately, just don't do their homework and/or haven't learned their lesson and end up pre-ordering the "next big game" from studios like Ubisoft and Bungie and then get pissed off when they're let down yet again. There's nothing wrong with waiting for a game to release and seeing what the reviews say. Steam allows you to play a game for up to 2 hours and get a refund no questions ask. The consumers are the ones who are letting these trends continue.

Maybe it's because I play games exclusively on PC now, but I've never been more impressed and satisfied with the shape of the gaming industry. I haven't bought a game for more than $30 in years, but I'd bet I've poured more time into games than 99% of the posters on this site.

Spin, the rest of what you wrote isn't news and has been addressed. It sucks that big studios/publishers want to gouge their customers, but all you need to do is start looking at the devs/studios/publishers that are doing things right. I think you'll find there's more good ones than bad ones.

JGfromtheNW wrote:as someone who enjoys online multiplayer games the most

Well....

there you go.

I'm not down with the whole hamster gaming experience, I actually like to play through a story and finish a game, or mod that game and make an entirely new story.

I'm not saying I can't understand the draw. I used to do high end raiding back in the glory days of EQ... (worldwide first kills across the board .... Veeshan Server, Cestus Dei, founding member, (Fires of Heaven in Vellius expansion era)) --- but man, that was like a full time job. I burned out big time.

Ebayed my character for 6 grand (again those were the days) and never looked back.

Z - the online character leveling experience in Star Wars: The Old Republic is outstanding. It's an MMO, but you can do virtually everything with one friend, and it's like ME2/ME3, but Star Wars. You could easily spend a ton of time leveling every class (unique class stories for half of them - four on each side of the force, so eight total) and get a lot of enjoyment, but it's a lot easier with a friend.

RolandDeschain wrote:Z - the online character leveling experience in Star Wars: The Old Republic is outstanding. It's an MMO, but you can do virtually everything with one friend, and it's like ME2/ME3, but Star Wars. You could easily spend a ton of time leveling every class (unique class stories for half of them - four on each side of the force, so eight total) and get a lot of enjoyment, but it's a lot easier with a friend.

My friend Kezi keeps hounding me with SW:TOR... she's been pecking at me in email for the last year. "Remember how much fun we ...."

Online multiplayer gaming are more like playing sports, and single player games are more like watching movies. Both are fun in their own way.

I love PC gaming, but I get tired of sitting on my computer chair and being hunched over my computer desk. It's pretty anti-social when people are over, too. And that sucks for me because I do love online multiplayer shooters, but can't stand playing them with a controller. So I kind of have to dab a little bit in both.

fenderbender123 wrote:Online multiplayer gaming are more like playing sports, and single player games are more like watching movies. Both are fun in their own way.

I love PC gaming, but I get tired of sitting on my computer chair and being hunched over my computer desk. It's pretty anti-social when people are over, too. And that sucks for me because I do love online multiplayer shooters, but can't stand playing them with a controller. So I kind of have to dab a little bit in both.

Exactly. It lets me express my competitive side since I don't participate in any of those types of sports anymore.

The most competitive gaming I've done in my entire life was when I was playing Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds for PS3 online every night for about a year straight. Yeah, that's right...a damn golf game.

fenderbender123 wrote:The most competitive gaming I've done in my entire life was when I was playing Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds for PS3 online every night for about a year straight. Yeah, that's right...a damn golf game.

Bahaha that's actually kind of awesome. Mine was definitely CSGO.

Some of my favorite gaming memories are playing Project Gotham Racing 2 on the original Xbox with a group of about 5 friends. We prolly played every night for over half a year before some of us got bored with it and moved on to different games. Original Xbox Live... those were the days.

Back in my Boeing days, it was all about Nintendo Golf... the entire 747 flightline crew would get together either at houses after work, or at the local pizza place and play nintendo golf... I used to win fistfulls of cash and enjoy hours of entertainment and social contact from that little primitive pixelated golf game...

The_Z_Man wrote:Back in my Boeing days, it was all about Nintendo Golf... the entire 747 flightline crew would get together either at houses after work, or at the local pizza place and play nintendo golf... I used to win fistfulls of cash and enjoy hours of entertainment and social contact from that little primitive pixelated golf game...

Sounds like a much better experience than the competitive game of my choice; League of Legends, also known as league of salt. The game is fun as hell, but it is quite possibly one of the most toxic, and competitive environments I've ever seen in any online game. It has the biggest Esport scene out of any game, hell the championships have even been on ESPN. It seems like everyone is dreaming of becoming some PRO or big time streamer. The ranked mode is very addictive.

Spin Doctor wrote:Sounds like a much better experience than the competitive game of my choice; League of Legends, also known as league of salt. The game is fun as hell, but it is quite possibly one of the most toxic, and competitive environments I've ever seen in any online game. It has the biggest Esport scene out of any game, hell the championships have even been on ESPN. It seems like everyone is dreaming of becoming some PRO or big time streamer. The ranked mode is very addictive.

I could never get into LoL...I was in a very top-tier raiding guild in original WoW, though. We were top five in the world at that time...I do, and don't, miss those days. Being that good in a 40-man group is so much harder than a group of four or five, lol.

Spin Doctor wrote:Sounds like a much better experience than the competitive game of my choice; League of Legends, also known as league of salt. The game is fun as hell, but it is quite possibly one of the most toxic, and competitive environments I've ever seen in any online game. It has the biggest Esport scene out of any game, hell the championships have even been on ESPN. It seems like everyone is dreaming of becoming some PRO or big time streamer. The ranked mode is very addictive.

I could never get into LoL...I was in a very top-tier raiding guild in original WoW, though. We were top five in the world at that time...I do, and don't, miss those days. Being that good in a 40-man group is so much harder than a group of four or five, lol.

I get where spin is coming from... it becomes an addiction.

Back in the day we had world-wild firsts on every raid boss... we were undisputed as the best 40 to 50 players out of half a million across the world. We had such epic moments it makes me a little teary eyed... so yes, I understand

I did a little raiding in WoW but it just wasn't the same because it was so EZ mode compared to EQ.

EQ was HARDCORE - there's nothing in gaming to compare it to, nothing. Quite frankly the whole raiding system has been tuned way down so "everyone" can participate, which I suppose is good, but back in the day... when you were leet, you were leet.

I'd walk through the city in FR to go auction something, and hundreds of Japanese players would bow to me as I passed... there is no feeling like that. We were like rock stars from 99 to 04...

When you died you had to do corpse runs because you left a body with all your gear and you'd respawn naked. If you wiped inside a raiding zone, your entire guild was stuck without gear -- and you had 24 (early on) to 72 hours before that corpse decayed and you lost everything. One night, Outriders of Karana wiped in Fear, back in the early days (which was easy to do, because Cazic Thule, the god of that plane, had a death word summon) and those guys were stuck for 24 hours, missing work, trying to get their corpses - also, with every death in EQ you lost XP, so one guy deleveled under 46, the min level to get into fear, and so he couldn't get back in and his corpse rotted with all the gear he'd spent accumulating over a year's time.

Anyway, back then it was all pretty primitive - some people from that era trace the origins of DKP to me and a few other raid pullers, because I was the only Shadowknight in our guild, and I was our designated raid puller --) again, pulling in EQ was absolutely unforgiving, one little screw up and the whole zone would come down on you and you'd spend 30 hours trying to get everyone's bodies back...)

Also I was one of the guild members who'd get invited on the FoH raids (#1 raiding guild in the world) and I'd pull there and get choice loot... Furor would have to give me the loot because there were so few of my class, and he'd sit there and rant away as he was making me richer and richer.

I'd go solo camp high end zones that required entire parties or raids and get freaking rich farming loot that whole guilds usually had to divy up. It got to the point where I was so laden in loot that everyone hated my guts. Whenever the guild master of FoH or our guild master would hand me a piece of loot during the raid, people would rage quit. Then one day, our Main Tank got knocked out and I stepped in and tanked one of the god dragons better than our main, and Furor lost his mind, complained to the devs and had my class nerfed! ha ha ha. In duels (PVP) I was something like 500 wins and 3 losses at one point (only person who could occasionally beat me was another SK) and I got more crap for that - every day I'd log in and get hundreds of tells asking me questions, or telling me how much they admired me. It was bizarro world - meanwhile I was rotting away of illness and in and out of the hospital in real life - that digital world became my life. (which is why I won't touch an MMO again).

Somewhere in the midst of all of that, our guild and a few others put together a system called DKP - and it's been the norm in MMO's ever since.

RolandDeschain wrote:I see your EQ & UO and raise you an Asheron's Call.

For whatever reason I never tried that one out. Heard it was good, just never got it.

It was brutal in an awesome way. It culled noobs from playing it simply by even leveling up. You had to be smart to even enjoy it, lol.

I played all the first get MMO's, including DAOC, AC, UO, Meridian, Anarchy, et., and in absolutely no way was any experience in any of them remotely comparable to EQ raiding. AC was easily exploitable - I had an Aluvian Archer/Bow Hunter. Soloing was EZ mode, and I didn't even use the perching exploit like so many did.

After I ebayed my EQ character I ended up in beta for Asheron's Call 2, which was more like an alpha, really, and then they went live before beta was even really out of its infancy... you could taste the impending doom. Everyone in beta warned Turbine but they wouldn't listen at all. AC2 was the most messed up game you ever saw. They had all these portals which ran on a separate server from the server we were actually playing on, and the portal server would crash constantly and we'd all be stuck in our zones unable to find groups. It was a rather beautiful game, in theory, a vast upgrade over AC in many ways, but my god there was no balance at all. Lugian Engineers were maybe the most OP class in the history of MMO's... they'd set up turrets and farm dragons all day long. My Tumerok feral was also pretty ridiculous. I think we went from 60k players on a dozen servers when the game went live from beta, to about 1k players on 1 server within a few months, and then it shut down all the way - a massive failure of a game, but an interesting experience to be sure.

Z, though I didn't say this in my post, I was referring mainly to PvP'ing on Darktide. AC didn't have large-scale raiding, but it had the most skill-based PvP combat I've ever seen in a multiplayer game of any kind, IMO. (On the always-red server, Darktide, that is.)

Also, I played AC2 as well. Every single change they made, just made things worse. It was incredible - like they were trying to end the game on purpose. Yet, it was also undoubtedly the most visually beautiful game of its time, and there were some awesome things in it that were very clever/entertaining, such as the musical instruments. I leveled every class to 50, sold my account for $1400, and then the game shutdown like 9-10 months later, LOL.

RolandDeschain wrote:Z, though I didn't say this in my post, I was referring mainly to PvP'ing on Darktide. AC didn't have large-scale raiding, but it had the most skill-based PvP combat I've ever seen in a multiplayer game of any kind, IMO. (On the always-red server, Darktide, that is.)

Also, I played AC2 as well. Every single change they made, just made things worse. It was incredible - like they were trying to end the game on purpose. Yet, it was also undoubtedly the most visually beautiful game of its time, and there were some awesome things in it that were very clever/entertaining, such as the musical instruments. I leveled every class to 50, sold my account for $1400, and then the game shutdown like 9-10 months later, LOL.

Ah, yea, I never played on Darktide. DAoC was my PVP game -- the realm vs realm stuff was insanely fun, storming the castles and all of that, well, at least for my Nord Pac Healer. I think I once mezzed an entire Albion raid group in one shot...

Yea, AC2, sigh, that had such potential. Remember that massive tree? That whole thing was pretty cool... like you said, at the time it was about the most beautiful game I ever saw...and if I remember correctly, it was right around 2 years before WoW came out and everyone was hitting burnout phase in EQ after the PoP expansion, and DAoC was struggling to put out expansion content due to Mythic's low budget, so Turbine had this incredible window of opportunity to seize a share of the market and instead they just dropped the ball in the biggest way.

I sometimes wonder if it was because of the fact that they knew they were lining up the rights to Middle Earth, and that made Asheron's Call pretty much irrelevant? It's almost like they wanted it to die so they could get on with Middle Earth Online...

Picked up Octopath Traveler on launch day. Havent put much time into it but so far it's actually a playable JRPG unlike 90% that have been released in rhe past 10 years. No cringy bs. Minimal voice acting. Focus on soundtrack, art style, battle system, and character development....exactly what you want in a JRPG.